When transmitting an electrical signal over a backplane, the signal is significantly degraded by losses and reflections. In order to properly recover the signal at the receiver, some form of equalization is necessary to counteract the effects of the channel. A common equalization technique utilized to remove noise and distortion of digital signals, such as intersymbol interference (ISI) caused by attenuation of high frequencies, is decision feedback equalization (DFE).
Typically, DFE is implemented at the receiver and includes placing a finite impulse feedback (FIR) filter at the output of the receiver decision circuit. Many decision feedback equalizers incorporate FIR filters to reduce errors caused by interference between successive pulses of data (e.g., ISI). Often, the input of the FIR filter is the output of the decision circuit, and the output of FIR filter is subtracted from the input of the decision circuit by a summer or summing circuit. An exemplary schematic of conventional DFE used to remove ISI without amplifying high-frequency noise is illustrated in FIG. 1.
Although presently available DFE systems are effective at boosting high frequency signals that are attenuated as the signal passes through the channel without amplifying high-frequency noise, such systems are limited in certain aspects. First, a delay of precisely one bit of time is required in the FIR filter. Synthesizing this exact delay requires tuning, is difficult to achieve with the process variations of semiconductor manufacturing, and requires the circuit to consume a great deal of power. Moreover, a basic premise of a DFE algorithm is that the decision made by the decision circuit is correct whereby such decision is used to form the feedback for the equalization. The need for the decision circuit to be correct is particularly problematic when dealing with heavily distorted channels. For example, when the channel is heavily distorted, the initial decision may not be correct. Under such condition, the weights of the filter coefficients must be accurately chosen before the system is used in order to insure that the decision is correct. However, if the properties of the channel are unknown, then DFE may not be able to adapt to generate the optimal equalization for one may not be able to select proper filter coefficient weights.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an equalization system which does not require the synthesis of precise delays and thus, uses minimal power. Further, it would be desirable for such system to be capable of adapting to heavily distorted channels.